OU scientist, son discover new bat species

HYDERABAD: A scientist at Osmania University (OU) along with her son discovered a new species of bat in a cave in Makuta, Kodagu district, Karnataka.
The new species named Miniopetrus Srinii Srini’s bent-winged bat has been discovered by OU scientist Dr Bhargavi Srinivasulu and her son Aditya Srinivasulu from the University of Reading, UK. They described it as a cryptic species — morphologically resemble already known species but differ from it genetically — of bat based on multiple lines of evidence.

“We collected the specimens of bats from a large subterranean cave in the dense jungles of Western Ghats in Makuta. We doubted that this could be a cryptic species of bat, which we had tentatively identified as the small bent-winged bat,” said Bhargavi Srinivasulu, a UGC-post doctoral fellow at the Department of Zoology, OU.
She said that a small bent-winged bat, Miniopterus pusillus, is reported from the Nicobar Islands, peninsular India, Nepal and Northeast India. Our research on Andaman bats has revealed that the fauna on the islands is genetically different from those on mainland India, she added.
We doubted that the Makuta specimens and those reported from other parts of the Western Ghats may be cryptic species. We conducted various studies, including genetic study, to determine the relationship between the Makuta specimens and others” she added.
“Two species of bent-winged bats – Miniopterus phillipsi and Miniopterus pusillus — are known from the Western Ghats. Our research provides evidence that the population of bent-winged bats assigned to the later species is a cryptic species,” she added.
The new species has been named in honour of C Srinivasulu, a renowned bat biologist working at Osmania University.